The Australian Open Series is a selection of

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball c ...

tournaments held annually prior to the start of the

Australian Open The Australian Open is a tennis tournament held annually at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Australia. The tournament is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events held each year, preceding the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a me ...

, Australia. In 2023, there are five official Australian Open Series tournaments held across Australia in preparation for the first Grand Slam of the year, as designated by

Tennis Australia Tennis Australia Limited is the governing body for Tennis in Australia. It is owned by Australian states and territories. The association organises national and international Tennis tournaments including the Australian Open, the Australian Open S ...

Tournaments

Week 1

United Cup The United Cup is an international hard court tennis tournament featuring mixed-gender teams from 18 countries. The first event was held in December 2022 through January 2023. The tournament is played across three Australian cities over 11 day ...

* Finals: Ken Rosewall Arena, Sydney * Group Stages: RAC Arena,

Perth Perth is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the Australian states and territories of Australia, state of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth most populous city in Aust ...

, Pat Rafter Arena,

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...

and Sydney Olympic Park Tennis Centre, Sydney The

United Cup The United Cup is an international hard court tennis tournament featuring mixed-gender teams from 18 countries. The first event was held in December 2022 through January 2023. The tournament is played across three Australian cities over 11 day ...

has been announced to launch in 2023 as a lead up event to the

. The concept of the United Cup is to be a multi-sex tournament where players form teams to represent their countries. The United Cup was brought in to replace the unpopular

ATP Cup The ATP Cup was an international outdoor hard court men's tennis team tournament, which ran from 2020 to 2022.The tournament was played across one or three Australian cities over ten days in the lead up to the Australian Open, and featured teams ...

in the Australian summer of tennis schedule.

Canberra International

* Canberra Tennis Centre, Canberra The Canberra International will form part of the Australian Open Series schedule in 2023. The tournament will be an ATP Challenger 100 event for the men's draw, and an ITF 60 event for the women's draw. The event took on greater status amongst the Australian summer schedule for 2023, whilst returning from a 3 year hiatus due to the 2019-20 Australian bushfire season and then the

Covid-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

Weeks 1 and 2

Adelaide International

Memorial Drive Park Memorial Drive Park, more generally referred to as "Memorial Drive", is a tennis venue, located adjacent to the Adelaide Oval, in the park lands surrounding the centre of Adelaide, South Australia. Memorial Drive took its name from the winding ...

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater A ...

The Adelaide International forms part of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Tour and Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Tour. The inaugural tournament was staged in January 2020 and took place at the upgraded Memorial Drive Park facility. In 2023, there will be held as two events held in consecutive weeks in the lead up to the Australian Open.

Week 2

Hobart International The Hobart International is a women's professional tennis tournament held at the Hobart International Tennis Centre in Hobart, Australia. Held since 1994, it forms a part of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Tour and is classed as an Interna ...

Hobart International Tennis Centre The Domain Tennis Centre is the premier tennis facility in the state of Tasmania, Australia. It is located on the Queens Domain less than 1 kilometre from the CBD of Hobart. The Hobart International Tennis Centre has 6 plexicushion hardcou ...

, Hobart The Hobart International is a women's professional tennis tournament held at the Hobart International Tennis Centre in Hobart, Australia. Held since 1994, it forms a part of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Tour and is classed as an International tournament (previously Tier IV). It is competed on outdoor hardcourts, and is held in the run-up to the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, the Australian Open.

Kooyong Classic

* Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club,

The Kooyong Classic was an exhibition tournament played in the lead-up to the Australian Open. The format for the Classic altered in accordance with the number of players participating, though in most years it featured both men's and women's singles matches. Kooyong was the original home of the Australian Open before the tournament moved to

Melbourne Park Melbourne Park is a sports venue in the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Since 1988 Australia's bicentenary, Melbourne Park has been home of the Australian Open Grand Slam tennis tournament played ...

in 1988. The tournament is scheduled to return in 2023.

Weeks 3 and 4

Australian Open The Australian Open is a tennis tournament held annually at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Australia. The tournament is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events held each year, preceding the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. ...

The Australian Open is one of four Grand Slam events on the international tennis schedule. It is held at

in Melbourne in the second half of January. It is the official Grand Slam of the Asia-Pacific.

Former tournaments

ATP Cup

The

was introduced in 2020 as a representative multi-city tournament where men's players form teams to represent their countries. The ATP Cup was initially supposed to be an annual tournament played across the cities of Sydney,

and

. The initial season in 2020 was played under this format, before the

meant the tournament was staged in

in 2021 in the immediate lead up to the 2021 Australian Open, before the tournament was staged entirely in Sydney in 2022. The ATP Cup lasted 3 editions before being discontinued after the 2022 edition due to poor attendance and a general lack of popularity amongst fans and players alike. It was replaced by a mixed-sex national team tournament known as the

for 2023.

Brisbane International

* Queensland Tennis Centre,

The

Brisbane International The Brisbane International established in 2009 is a professional tennis tournament played on outdoor hardcourts in Brisbane, Queensland in Australia. It is a WTA Premier tournament of the WTA Tour and was part of the ATP World Tour 250 serie ...

was a professional tennis tournament played on outdoor hard courts in Brisbane, Queensland. It formed part of the

Women's Tennis Association The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) is the principal organizing body of women's professional tennis. It governs the WTA Tour which is the worldwide professional tennis tour for women and was founded to create a better future for women's tenn ...

(WTA) and

Association of Tennis Professionals The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) is the governing body of the men's professional tennis circuits – the ATP Tour, the ATP Challenger Tour and the ATP Champions Tour. It was formed in September 1972 by Donald Dell, Jack Kramer, and ...

(ATP) Tours, with it dropping off the ATP Tour in 2019 due to the establishment of the

. It was held annually in January at the Queensland Tennis Centre, with the last edition being held in 2020 with only a women's draw, given the departure of the ATP after 2019. The tournament was not seen in 2021 and 2022 due to the

, and was dropped entirely from

's schedule for 2023.

Hopman Cup

Perth Arena Perth Arena (known commercially as ) is an entertainment and sporting arena in the city centre of Perth, Western Australia, used mostly for basketball matches. It is located on Wellington Street near the site of the former Perth Entertainmen ...

The

Hopman Cup The Hopman Cup is an international eight-team indoor hardcourt tennis tournament that played mixed-gender teams on a country-by-country basis.It was held in Perth, Western Australia each year from 1989 to 2019, before being replaced on the calen ...

was an eight-nation tournament featuring one male and one female player representing their country. The tournament was originally played at the Burswood Dome before being moved to the

in 2014. It has featured several of the top players, including

Roger Federer Roger Federer (; born 8 August 1981) is a Swiss former professional tennis player. He was ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 310 weeks, including a record 237 consecutive weeks, and finished as the year-e ...

, who won the last edition for Switzerland with compatriot

Belinda Bencic Belinda Bencic ( sk, Belinda Benčičová, ; born 10 March 1997) is a Swiss professional tennis player. She has a career-high ranking of No. 4 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) which she achieved in February 2020. Bencic has won six singl ...

Sydney International

* Sydney Olympic Park Tennis Centre, Sydney The Sydney International (formerly known as the Championship of New South Wales and New South Wales Open) was played in the lead-up to the Australian Open for both men and women. The tournament was removed from the calendar in 2020 to make way for the

. The tournament returned for a one-off edition in 2022, known as the Sydney Tennis Classic.

World Tennis Challenge

The World Tennis Challenge was a three-night exhibition tournament held in the week before the Australian Open in Adelaide, South Australia. The tournament was created by a consortium of past players. It usually had four teams of two players, a 'legend' and a current player were paired into areas e.g. Americas or represent their countries. The current players played each other in a best of 3 match with a match tiebreaker for a 3rd set. The legends played a pro set, and the doubles if needed was a normal set with no a rules before a super tie break.

2021 and 2022 COVID-19 alternative tournaments

In 2021 most of the usual tournaments were either relocated to

or not held at all, as a result of international and domestic travel restrictions imposed by the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

. The

2021 ATP Cup The 2021 ATP Cup was the second edition of the ATP Cup, an international outdoor hard court men's team tennis tournament held by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). It was held with 12 teams at Melbourne Park in Australia, from 2 to ...

was moved to Melbourne Park but cut to 12 teams, whilst two WTA tournaments (the

Gippsland Trophy Gippsland is a rural regions of Victoria, region that makes up the southeastern part of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, mostly comprising the coastal plains to the rainward (southern) side of the Victorian Alps (the southernmost secti ...

and Yarra Valley Classic) and two ATP tournaments (the Great Ocean Road Open and Murray River Open) were held at the park in the lead-up to the 2021 Australian Open. An additional WTA tournament, the Grampians Trophy was later added for players who had to undergo strict quarantine measures upon arrival in Australia, serving as preparation for the Australian Open. Two other WTA tournaments, the

Phillip Island Trophy Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who popularize ...

and Adelaide International, were staged in the last week and week after the Open. All of the new alternative tournaments except one (sans Adelaide) take place in Melbourne Park but are named after various places in the state of Victoria. In 2022, the series also had an abnormal calendar. Two new tournaments were created in Melbourne Park for the WTA and one new tournament was created for the ATP. The tournaments were named Melbourne Summer Set 1 and Melbourne Summer Set 2. Men did not have a tournament for the Melbourne Summer Set 2.

References

External links

Official website
{{Australian Open championships Australian Open (tennis) Tennis tours and series